away from the road. They went on till they reached the orange
orchard of the Zanjero of the town. The Zanjero is the man who has
the oversight of the irrigation system, and he has deputies under
him. Rosa and her brother Joseph thought the Zanjero a great man,
and stood much in awe of the irrigation laws concerning stealing
water, or raising a gate to waste water, or giving water to persons
outside the district.
The two bread-carriers went through the orange orchard, which was
not being irrigated at this hour, for the Zanjero was particular
himself to keep the hour that he paid for, as other men should be.
Up to the Zanjero's house Rosa now carried the bread, and his wife
herself paid for it. Rosa tied the coins carefully in one corner of
the black shawl that she wore over her head.
"Rosa," anticipated Joseph aloud, as they went away through the
orange orchard again, "when I am grown up, I shall be a Zanjero, and
we will not have to keep the panaderia!"
But Rosa looked unbelieving. "It is not granted every man to be the
Zanjero," returned she gravely, "and I love the panaderia."
It was true. She did love it, even to the castor-oil plants that
grew like weeds in neglected places in the yard, and down to the
south wall that was hung with a thick veil of red peppers that her
grandmother was drying in the sun. It was only because the panaderia
had not enough customers that Rosa looked so grave to-day. Besides,
the grandmother's birthday was near, and where was money for a
present?
At the other house where the children regularly delivered bread,
irrigation had been going on all the morning. The half-day of
irrigation, for which the owner of this orange orchard had paid, was
just over, and the water-gate connecting the man's ditch with the
main zanja was being shut when Rosa and Joseph arrived. The little
water-gate was like a wooden shovel. It slid down some grooves, and
the running water stopped. It squirmed in the zanja an instant. Then
the little wooden gate was fastened with a padlock, as every gate
must be when the payer for water had received from the Zanjero's
deputy the amount of water paid for, whether by the fifty-cent-hour,
or the two-dollar-day, or the dollar-and-a-quarter night rate, and
whoever unauthorized should unfasten the padlock and open the gate
would be a thief of water.
After witnessing the shutting off of the water, Joseph carried his
paper-enfolded loaf to the house of this second regular customer,
and then the children turned homeward toward the panaderia.
"Pan por dinero!" cried the parrot, Papagayo, when Rosa and Joseph
reentered the panaderia; but alas! no customers were there. Only the
grandmother sat sewing behind the counter, her blurred old eyes
close to the cloth she held.
"I will take care of the panaderia now, grandmother," Rosa offered;
and the grandmother answered, "I will rest a little, then."
The poor, dear grandmother! She was so tired and thin, nowadays, and
her hands trembled so much! It was hard for her to try to sew. If
the panaderia paid better, if there were more regular customers to
whom Rosa and Joseph could carry eatables, then the grandmother
would not attempt sewing at all, for it strained her eyes very much.
But now she did not know what else to do. There must be a living for
herself and the children someway.
Rosa found the afternoon long, sitting behind the counter, waiting
for customers and trying to sew. A little boy came in and bought a
loaf. Two girls bought another. Then the panaderia door ceased to
swing, and the quiet afternoon went on. Across the street, women
stood here and there and gossiped.
Nobody came. It grew four, then five, then six o'clock. Finally the
panaderia door opened, and a woman entered. Rosa sprang up. Here was
a customer, at last!
But the woman only came to the counter, and stood still. She was
young, very thin and ill, evidently, and her eyes had tears in their
depths. Under the black shawl that was over the newcomer's head Rosa
spied a dark mark, as of a bruise, on the forehead. The young woman
tried to speak.
"I have three little children," she said. "I am sick. I cannot work,
and their father drinks mescal--always mescal. I have no money. Will
you give me a little bread? I am no beggar, but my babies are so
hungry!"
Rosa knew how much harm mescal (a kind of intoxicating drink made
from the maguey or Mexican aloe) did among the neighbors. She did
not doubt the woman's tale; only it was disappointing, when one
thought a real customer had at last come to the panaderia, to find
that it was not so. But the girl nodded sympathetically at the
conclusion of the young woman's appeal.
"I will speak to grandmother," she promised.
She found her grandmother lying down still, but half awake, and
explained to her the situation.
"Yes, yes," returned the grandmother, her wrinkled face full of
sympathy. "Give her the bread. Has not the Lord told us to care for
the poor? He would not be pleased if we sent her away without bread.
Tell the poor woman to come again. The little children, must be
fed."
Rosa hurried back to the counter, and gave the woman two fresh
loaves and the grandmother's message.
"Gracias!" (thanks) sobbed the young woman and hurried away.
"I hope she will not tell that we gave her bread," murmured Rosa to
herself as the usual quiet settled over the panaderia. "We can't
afford to give bread to many people."
The weeks went by, and the panaderia did not prosper very well. It
grew to be a customary thing for the thin, sick woman to come daily
for bread, and she was never refused. She said with a sensitive
eagerness that when she was well again she would work and pay all
back, and Rosa's grandmother answered "Yes," cheerily, to this
promise, though any one who looked at the poor young mother's face
could see that there was small prospect of her ever being well again
in this world. Her husband still drank.
Times grew harder and harder at the panaderia. In the midst of the
winter a heavy blow fell, for the Zanjero's wife took a fancy to
making her own bread, and as she was the regular customer who bought
more loaves and paid more promptly than the other, the panaderia
felt the loss keenly. Customers were very scarce, and the
grandmother's eyes became so weak that she could no longer sew. Rosa
sewed the little that she could, but some days there was scarcely
enough to eat at the panaderia, except the very few loaves in the
case--the loaves that the three hardly knew whether to dare eat or
not, for fear some one should come in and want to buy. There were
many other people who were poor and without work, and the little
family kept their troubles to themselves. The poor sick neighbor
always came every day and was given bread. Winter passed and spring
arrived without much change in the panaderia's prospects.
"We could have eaten that ourselves," thought Rosa one night when
the neighbor went out with the bread.
The grandmother had said that the poor were God's care, and he would
bless those who for his sake fed them.
"But we keep on being poorer and poorer," thought Rosa with a sigh.
Then she reproached herself. Had not her grandmother said that the
Lord cared about the panaderia? One day when spring was turning into
summer, the poor neighbor came in earlier than usual. Her face was
very white. Rosa and her grandmother were both by the counter. The
grandmother smiled and was about to draw out the bread and give it
to the woman. But the poor neighbor dropped her head on the counter,
and stretched out her hand toward the old grandmother. The
grandmother took the hand, and lo! in her own lay a little key.
"Take it to the Zanjero!" sobbed the sick neighbor, "and tell him to
forgive! It was the mescal made my husband do it!"
Little by little Rosa and her grandmother pieced together the story
of the small key. Some unscrupulous persons wished to obtain water
for irrigation without paying for it. A key was made that fitted the
padlocks of the little wooden gates leading from the zanja. By night
some one must open these gates and close them again before morning.
It was thieving, of course, and the Zanjero or his deputies might
catch the person who did it. But the sick neighbor's husband,
wanting money to buy more mescal, had been induced to undertake the
task of stealthily opening the gates. His wife, suspicious of his
errand, had followed him on the first night of his attempt. She had
seen him stop by a Mexican cactus, and raise something, she knew not
what, in the zanja. After he had gone, she went to the spot and
putting her hand into the water felt the current that ran through a
gate he had opened.
"Then I know!" tearfully declared the woman to Rosa's grandmother.
"I follow my husband. I tell him the Zanjero is the friend of the
good panaderia that gives the bread! I tell him he shall not open
the other gates! I snatch the key! I tell him `No! No! The panaderia
is my friend! The Zanjero is the panaderia's friend!' He shall not
cheat the Zanjero! My husband say if he open other gates he get
money for mescal. I say 'No!' I run away with key. My husband say,
'Don't tell anybody! I will not open the gates again! Let other men
do it.' But I say, 'I must tell, because the Zanjero is the best
friend of the panaderia. No one shall cheat the best friend of the
panaderia, that feeds our babies so long--all winter and now."
Evidently the woman supposed that the Zanjero was still the
principal regular customer of the panaderia. Rosa and her
grandmother had never told about his ceasing to buy bread, and the
neighbor thought that he was still considered their very chief
customer.
That evening Rosa and Joseph took the long-unused path to the
Zanjero's house. His wife came to the door.
"Oh," she said, "it's the two little bread-bringers! No, I don't
want any bread. Are you trying to get orders?"
"May I see the Zanjero?" asked Rosa gravely.
The Zanjero's wife, whose name in plain English was Mrs. Craig, led
the two children into her husband's presence. Rosa, very pale with
the thought of being in the presence of so great a man, told her
story in trembling tones, and held out the key.
The Zanjero took it, and looked at it curiously.
"Will you forgive?" asked Rosa timorously. "The poor, sick woman
asks you to forgive. She says it was the mescal that made her
husband do it."
"I presume so," returned the man grimly. "They're all thieves."
But the Zanjero's wife was wiser than her husband. She dropped into
a chair and put an arm around Rosa.
"You have not told all the story yet, or else I do not understand,"
she said gently. "What makes this woman so much your friend that she
comes and tells your grandmother about the key?"
So the whole story came out at last--about the long, sad winter at
the panaderia; the grandmother's attempts at sewing; her failing
eyes; the lack of customers, yet the daily giving of bread to the
poor neighbor and her three children; the trust that the Lord knew
about the panaderia and its occupants.
The Zanjero's wife understood it all now. She looked up at her
husband. There were tears in her eyes as she said:
"While you are forgiving that man, you'd better think how much
forgiveness I need for having stopped taking bread of the panaderia
in the heart of winter, when they needed the money so badly! To
think of their struggling along, and yet giving bread every day to a
woman and three babies! If the panaderia folks had not done this,
you'd never have found out about this plan to rob the zanja! That
woman would simply have kept the story and the key to herself, and
those dishonest men would have found somebody else to open the gates
at night for them. It was only because she thought that you were a
noted customer of the panaderia that she sent you word of this plan
to steal the water."
The great Zanjero turned and looked at Rosa.
"Tell that sick woman," he said gravely, "that I forgive her husband
for opening the gate, though I don't know how much water he helped
steal that night. Tell her, though, that he must never do such a
thing again. I am coming to see him myself, and I shall tell him he
is forgiven. But he must stop drinking mescal."
"And tell your grandmother," broke in the Zanjero's wife, "that I
want three loaves of bread to-morrow morning, and I want bread every
day. Here's the money for the three loaves. And I'm going to get you
a lot of regular customers! I have friends enough. They'll take
bread of you, if I ask them. You poor children! Why didn't you come
and tell me about things, long ago?"
So it was that the mercy which the old grandmother showed to the
sick neighbor and her children returned in blessing on the
panaderia. For the Zanjero's wife rested not till she had fulfilled
her promise. Customers became many and well-paying, and the old
grandmother, happy in the prosperity, said to Rosa and to Joseph:
"See you, my children? Did I not tell you that the Lord knew about
the panaderia? It is he who sends all this good to us who deserve it
not."
MISS STRATTON'S PAPER
The wind was blowing quite keenly from the north, and Miss Stratton
had the collar of her coat turned up, as she hurried through the
darkness of the avenue. She was talking behind her coat collar, the
tips of which brushed her lips. If what Miss Stratton said had been
audible to any one beside herself, it would have sounded as if she
were talking severely to somebody.
"I don't see why you can't throw that evening paper where we can
find it!" Miss Stratton was saying under her breath. "We have a
broad walk, and there's plenty of room! I've been out in the yard
three or four times to-night, and hunted thoroughly, and mother's
been out once. Mother's eyes are poor, and she likes to have the
paper before dark."
Miss Stratton caught her breath in the cold wind. She hastened by a
gas-lamp, climbed the hill, and found her way in darkness up the
long steps of a house. She fumbled for the bell and rang it. There
was a little stir within, the opening of an interior door to let
light into the hall, and then a boy's step. The front door opened.
Miss Stratton looked straight into the boyish face that appeared.
"I want to know where you threw our paper to-night," she demanded.
"I can't find it anywhere."
The boy stepped one side so that the light within the farther room
might fall on Miss Stratton's face. He recognized her.
"Oh," returned the boy, "your paper went up a tree."
"Up a tree!" exclaimed Miss Stratton, indignantly. "Why didn't you
come in and tell me, so I'd know where to look for it?"
"If I'd had an extra copy with me, I'd have thrown in another," said
the boy--"I'll get you one."
He walked back into the sitting-room, glad to escape from the
accusing subscriber, whom he had not expected to see following him
to his home. Miss Stratton sternly waited. The boy's sister had come
into the hall, and was holding a candle for a light. Her brother
came back with the evening paper, and Miss Stratton took it.
"I wish you'd be careful where you throw that paper, Harry," she
admonished him, her indignation cooling. "I've spoken to you about
that before. I don't like to have to come away up here for the
paper. It isn't convenient."
"Yes'm," answered the boy.
Miss Stratton hurried home. When she arrived there, one of the first
things she saw gleaming faintly through the garden's darkness, was
the missing evening paper that Harry had thrown into a pepper tree
near the side fence. During Miss Stratton's absence, the strong wind
had shaken the paper down, and it lay at the foot of the tree. "How
did he suppose I was going to find that paper up that tree?"
questioned Miss Stratton. "I did look up there before dark, but I
didn't see anything."
The evening paper was easily discoverable for a week or so after
this: Then matters went back to their old state and Miss Stratton
frequently spent a quarter of an hour finding her evening paper.
"If he'd take the slightest pains he could throw it on this walk
that is ten feet wide!" she would tell herself indignantly, as she
pushed aside the branches of blue marguerites and the leaves of
calla-lilies, and peered into holes on either side of the steps near
the front gate, where the watering of the garden had washed away the
soil.
Miss Stratton had liked Harry very much, when he first became paper
boy. He had a frank manner that made him friends. At first he
carefully threw the paper on Miss Stratton's front piazza. He never
skipped an evening, as the former paper boy had sometimes done, and
Miss Stratton rejoiced that at last a paper boy who was reliable had
been found for the route. Months had passed, and while Harry was as
careful at some houses as before, Miss Stratton's was not among that
number. Harry had three 'customers on that street and he nightly
walked only as far toward Miss Stratton's as would enable him to
throw her paper and then, with two or three steps, throw another
paper to the neighbor diagonally across the street. A few more steps
would have made Harry sure that Miss Stratton's paper fell every
night squarely on the broad front path, but he "fired the paper at
her," as he expressed it, and the result was Miss Stratton's
otherwise unnecessary number of steps hunting after her paper. Yet
Harry would have scorned to cheat any customer. He fulfilled the
letter of the law. He delivered the paper.
Late one afternoon the minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Landler,
came by invitation to take supper with Mrs. and Miss Stratton. After
a while, as they sat, pleasantly chatting, Mr. Landler spoke of a
ship that had been overdue for almost two weeks. A neighbor's son
was on board, and this fact caused Mr. and Mrs. Landler to look at
the papers, morning and night, as soon as possible, to ascertain if
anything had been heard of the missing vessel.
"That's what my daughter and I have been doing, too," returned Mrs.
Stratton. "I wonder if this evening's paper hasn't come, so we could
look?"
Her daughter glanced at the clock.
"Why, yes!" said she. "That paper ought to have come before now."
Miss Stratton went out and hunted carefully. No paper was visible,
search as she might.
"Perhaps it hasn't come yet," she said to the guests, when she came
in.
A little later she went out again. Mrs. Landler came to help search,
though Miss Stratton disclaimed the need of aid.
"The paper doesn't always fall where I can see it," explained Miss
Stratton, mortified at her failure to find the paper for her guests.
"Who brings it around?" asked Mrs. Landler, looking at the broad
front walk.
"Harry Butterworth," answered Miss Stratton.
She did not tell of the annoyance Harry had caused her heretofore.
Harry's mother was a church friend of the Landlers and the
Strattons, and Miss Stratton was loath to expose the boy's
shortcomings.
No paper appeared, and after a thorough search, Mrs. Landler and
Miss Stratton went into the house. Dusk was coming. Miss Stratton
had occasion to go upstairs for something, and glancing out of the
front hall window, she saw the twisted roll of that evening's paper
lying on a projection of the roof.
"He threw the paper on the roof!" exclaimed Miss Stratton, "and he
didn't come in to tell me!"
She pushed up the hall window, and reaching out as far as she dared,
she tried with an old umbrella handle to dislodge the paper. She
drew breathlessly back.
"It's no use! I can't get it!" she gasped.
She went downstairs and told her mother quietly, but Mrs. Stratton
had no scruples about informing her guests what had happened.
"That boy's thrown this evening's paper on the roof!" stated old
Mrs. Stratton. "He does put us to so much trouble!"
The minister instantly offered to climb the roof. Miss Stratton and
her mother protested, but Mr. Landler took off his coat, climbed out
of an upper-story window, and secured the paper. In one column was a
notice that the missing ship had been heard from and was safe. Great
was the rejoicing around the Strattons' supper-table that their
friend's son was not lost.
The next time Mr. Landler saw Harry, the minister said pleasantly,
"You gave me quite a climb the other night, my boy."
Harry looked astonished.
"Gave you a climb?" he questioned. "I gave you one?"
"Yes," nodded Mr. Landler. "Miss Stratton's evening paper fell on
her roof. My wife and I were taking supper there, so I climbed the
roof for the paper."
Harry turned very red. Was ever a paper boy so unfortunate? He knew
the paper fell on the roof, but who would have supposed Mr. Landler
was at the Strattons'? Harry wanted very much to be thought well of
by the minister and his wife. Everybody liked them.
"I didn't know you were there," apologized Harry, hardly knowing
what to say.
"No," said the minister, gently, "we never know who may be in any
home. You didn't know you were delivering the paper to me. You
thought it was to Miss Stratton. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes," acknowledged the boy.
"If the Lord Jesus were here on earth, Harry," went on the minister
in a very grave, tender tone, "and if he wanted a little service
from you, you wouldn't render it in the way you deliver Miss
Stratton's paper, would you? Yet she is his child, one of his
representatives on earth, and as you treat her you treat him.
'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these,' you
know, Harry."
The next night Miss Stratton's paper fell with an emphatic thwack in
the middle of the front walk. The next night it did the same, and
the next, and the next.
"What has changed that boy?" wondered Miss Stratton with grateful
relief, as weeks passed and the paper still fell in plain sight.
She did not know that as Harry carefully aimed his papers, the boy
thought, "'Ye have done it unto me.'"
AN HONEST DAY'S WORK.
Willis walked down one of the city wharves. He was going to see his
father, Mr. Sutherland, who was one of the men employed by the State
Harbor Commissioners in repairing wharves. The piles that supported
the wharves often needed renewing, being eaten by teredos. Sometimes
the flooring of the wharves sagged and needed restoring to the
former level.
Willis liked to see the pile-driver with its big hammer. He marveled
at the air-pumps with which sagging wharves were raised. Perhaps
three air-pumps at a time would be stationed over as many "caps," as
the twelve-inch timbers under the wharf's flooring were called. The
pumps, being worked, would raise the caps and hold them until blocks
could be shoved underneath. Then the pumps were worked some more,
and other blocks put under, till the wharf was restored to the
required level. Great screws such as are used in raising buildings
were also employed under wharves sometimes. There were rocks under
some wharves, and water was under others. Whichever it was, Willis'
father often had to go under the wharves and climb around among the
caps and stringers and piles, repairing.
Seven or eight other men were employed like Mr. Sutherland. It was
mid-forenoon, but Willis saw that three or four of the men were not
working. They were idling around the engine of the pile-driver, and
were eating something that Willis found to be cooked crabs.
"Where's father?" asked Willis. "Under the wharf, working," answered
one man. "He thinks the State's looking after him every minute."
Willis saw some planks had been taken up in a distant part of the
wharf's flooring. He went there and swung himself down under the
wharf. There were rocks there, and Willis, following the sound of a
hammer, came to his father.
"That you, Willis?" asked his father pleasantly.
"Pa," said the boy, "some of the other men are up there eating
crabs. Why don't you go up and get some, too?"
"It isn't lunch-time," returned Mr. Sutherland. "We're expected to
work now."
"Three or four of the men aren't working," said Willis.
"No," rejoined his father. "Several of the men lately have taken to
catching crabs sometimes during work-hours."
"The men tie a rope to a big twine net, and bait it, and let it out
into the bay. In a little while they haul it in again, and there are
maybe half a dozen big crabs in the net. The men have made a sort of
boiler out of an empty kerosene can with one end cut off. They
attach a hose to the boiler of the engine and fill that can with hot
water. The crabs cook in a short time and those men stop work to
eat. It would be all right if the men cooked the crabs at noon, when
we're allowed to lay off, but they stop in the fore-noon sometimes
an hour, and again in the afternoon sometimes, and eat crabs. The
foreman we have now allows it. He does it himself."
While Mr. Sutherland talked he was working. Several of the other men
were working up on top of the wharf, as Willis could tell by the
sounds, but the boy's thoughts were with those three or four other
men who were idling. Were not those men employed to work as steadily
as his father?
"It isn't fair for them to stop and you to have to keep on,"
objected Willis. "I should think those, men would be discharged."
"They may and they mayn't," said his father. "They are appointed by
different Harbor Commissioners, and as long as the Commissioners
don't know, I suppose the men will keep their places."
"One man told me you thought the State was looking at you every
minute," said Willis.
"My boy," answered Mr. Sutherland, fitting a block into place, "it's
true that I'm employed to work for the State, and I feel just as
much that I must do honest work for the State as if I were working
for some individual. But it isn't thought of the State that makes me
faithful. A Christian ought to give an honest day's work. Some
people don't seem to think cheating the State is as bad as cheating
another person. But it is."
Willis climbed upon the wharf again. He saw when the men who had
been eating crabs came back to work. He noticed they did not work
very heartily.
"My father doesn't work that way," thought the boy.
"An honest day's work." The words followed Willis as he went away
from the wharf. The next week Willis was going to begin work for a
large dry-goods store.
"I'll do honest day's work, too," resolved Willis.
He did not put it into words, but he thought that the One who saw
whether a man under the wharves did an honest day's work would see
whether a boy working for a store did the same. Willis was trying to
be a Christian.
Busy days Willis had after that. The large dry-goods store had many
customers who often did not wish to carry bundles home. The store
had two pretty, white-covered, small carts for the delivering of
packages. Willis drove one cart and a boy named August drove the
other.
One afternoon Willis, out delivering dry-goods, drove by the house
where August lived, and saw the store's other cart standing there.
"August is home," thought Willis. Just then, August came out.
"Don't tell," called August, laughing.
Willis, hardly comprehending, drove on about his business.
That evening at store-closing time, both boys were back with their
receipt books, signed by customers who had received their packages.
The boys went out of the store together.
"Saw me coming out of our house today, didn't you?" said August to
Willis.
"Don't you ever stop off half an hour or so, when you're on your
rounds?"
"Why, no!" answered Willis. "What would they say at the store, if
they knew?"
"They can't know," asserted August. "I often stop, that way.
Yesterday I went to see my aunt. How can the store tell? They don't
know just how long it will take to deliver all the parcels. Some
folks live farther off than others. Who's going to know?"
Willis hesitated. He remembered that the thought of the men at the
wharves had been: "Who would know?" Willis had never heard that
anybody had lost his place at the wharves on account of dawdling.
What if August never was found out? Was it right to steal an hour,
or half an hour, of his employer's time?
"No," thought Willis. "I'm going to be honest."
Late one afternoon August came into the store. Willis was later
still, because he had had more parcels to deliver. Both boys'
receipt books showed the customers' signatures.
"There was a big fire up-town," said August secretly to Willis
afterwards. "I stopped to see it before delivering my parcels. You
just ought to have been there!"
"How long did you stay?" asked Willis, gravely.
"Oh, I don't know!" returned August. "Three-quarters of an hour,
maybe. I delivered my parcels all right afterwards."
Willis did not tell anybody about August's actions.
"I wish he wouldn't tell me about them, either," thought Willis,
uncomfortably.
That week August was discharged.
"I happened to be at the fire myself, and saw you," said one of the
store's proprietors to August. "The next time you stop to see a
fire, you will not have a chance to keep one of our delivery carts
waiting an hour while you waste your employer's time watching the
firemen. It didn't look well to see our firm's name on that white
cart standing idle, just as if we hadn't many customers."
"And you were seen once," added the other proprietor, "with one of
our carts standing beside an open block, while a ball game was being
played there last week."
As Willis regretfully saw his companion turned away, there came back
to him the scene in the semi-darkness under the wharf, when his
father said, "A Christian ought to give an honest day's work." "And
I will," he muttered.
TIMOTEO
Two white jaw-bones of a whale stood upright in the sunshine, their
surfaces showing to a near observer numerous small indentations that
caught the dust. The jaw-bones were relics from a little whaling
station that had once been in business near the town. Even now
whales occasionally wander from the great Pacific into the blue bay
on which this old, partly Spanish, California town was situated.
The two white jaw-bones now served the purpose of gate-posts, and
stood some six feet high beside the front gate that opened into a
garden where red hollyhocks rose higher than the humbled jaw-bones.
Inside the gate, the front walk had long been paved with the
vertebrae of whales, each vertebra being laid separately.
No one who had not seen such a walk would realize how well whales'
vertebrae will answer for paving. Some of the old vertebrae had now
sunk below the original level of the walk, so that the path by which
a person went to the old adobe house beyond the red hollyhocks was
somewhat uneven as to surface.
The long, low house was partly roofed with tiles, and the adobe
walls of the dwelling were a yard thick, as any one might see who
looked at the windowsills.
On one of these broad sills Isabelita leaned, her black eyes fixed
on the bone gate-posts that she could see through the blossoming
hollyhocks. There was a displeased expression on the young girl's
face. She was watching for her brother Timoteo, who would soon come
from school.
"He must go for the cow tonight," resolved Isabelita aloud in
Spanish. "I will not go! I wish the Americans had never come to this
town! In the old days, my father says, there were no cattle notices
on the trees. My father did not have to go for cows every night!"
And Isabelita frowned as she remembered the notices about letting
cattle run loose upon the highway.
These Spanish--and--English notices were now nailed on pines here
and there along the roads, and proved a source of inquiry to
wandering Americans who saw the boards with their heading:
"AVISO!!"
preceded by two inverted exclamation points and followed by two
others in the upright position--that some Americans have perhaps
been wont to think is the only attitude in which an exclamation
point can stand, Americans not being accustomed to the ease with
which an exclamation point can stand on its head, when used in
Spanish literature.
But it was not only with cattle notices and Americans that Isabelita
was offended this day. She was in a bad humor, and nothing suited
her. Hence it was in no pleasant voice that she called to Timoteo,
when he at last made his appearance between the bony gate-posts:
"Hombre bobo, thou must go for the cow tonight!"
Now, "hombre bobo" means much the same as our word "booby,"
therefore this was not a very soothing manner of beginning her
information. To Isabelita's surprise, however, Timoteo answered only
"Yes," and, coming in, put his one book carefully away, and then
went forth for the cow, as he had been bidden. Isabelita stared
after him. She had at least expected a quarrel.
Isabelita would have been more surprised still, if she could have
seen what Timoteo did after reaching the place in the woods where
the cow was tethered. He threw himself down; crushing the fragrant,
small-leaved vines of "yerba buena" as he fell, and, hiding his
face, Timoteo cried in a half-angry, half-hopeless tumult of
feeling. The pink blossoming thistles nodded, and the cow looked
wonderingly at the lad, but no one else saw or heard him. By and by
he sat up.
"Teacher never like me any more," he told himself, his lips
quivering. "Americanos tell her my father lazy, my mother no clean.
And I try, I try!"
He choked down a sob. A new teacher had come to the public school, a
sweet-faced, pleasant-toned young lady, whom Timoteo was ready to
obey devotedly from the first time she smiled on the school. Timoteo
did want to learn to be somebody! He looked with admiration on the
Americans boys' clothes and on an especial blue necktie that Herbert
Page wore. Timoteo wondered how it would seem to have a father who
worked and who provided his family with plenty to wear. The lad
Timoteo meant to be like one of the Americans when he grew up. He
would work, instead of lounging about the streets all day, smoking
"cigarros."
But alas! That day he had overheard some of the American boy
scholars talking to the teacher about the Spanish ones.
"There's Timoteo," he overheard Herbert Page say. "You don't want to
have him for your milk-man, Miss Montgomery! I don't believe they
keep the milk pails any too clean at his house. Laziness and dirt go
together in these Spanish houses!"
Poor Timoteo! He had hoped the teacher and her mother would take
milk of him. Miss Montgomery had almost promised to, before this,
and one customer for milk made such a difference in Timoteo's home
finances!
"But now she never like me any more," Timoteo hopelessly forewarned
himself, as he sat among the trees, his eyes yet red with crying.
"And I try, I try! I have learned wash my hands clean, when I go
school. And I try so hard learn read and write!"
Timoteo sighed heavily. He did not hate those American boys who
looked so much nicer than he. He only had a sorrowful, hopeless
feeling as he unfastened the cow and started homeward with her.
But when the cow lumbered in through the two white, strange
gate-posts at home, she swerved aside a little, and Timoteo saw, standing
under the tall red hollyhocks, his teacher, Miss Montgomery. She had
a bright tin pail in her hand, and she wanted some milk.
Timoteo's eyes brightened.
"I go wash my hands clean, clean!" he cried, and, disappearing, came
back a few minutes after, holding out his palms for Miss
Montgomery's inspection.
She smiled, and gave him the pail.
"Poor little fellow!" she thought, as she watched him milking. "I'm
afraid some of our American boys don't have charity enough for him."
Timoteo beamed with happiness as he returned the pail brimming with
milk. He was Miss Montgomery's milkman regularly after that, and
when, on Sundays, Miss Montgomery taught a Sunday-school class of
boys, Timoteo always slipped in and listened, though the teacher
wondered sometimes if the boy could understand.
There were fair-haired American boys who looked down on Timoteo at
school and who made him feel that a Spanish boy was an inferior.
Sometimes Timoteo almost felt as if some of the Chinese boys, in the
small fishing-village outside the town, were happier than he, for
they did not seem to care to know anything but how to dry nets and
dry fish. Herbert Page was one of the school boys who always felt
superior to Timoteo. Timoteo did not wonder at it. He had a very
humble opinion of himself, yet sometimes he wished Herbert would
only look at him as he passed by. Herbert would not have spoken
rudely to Timoteo. That, Herbert would have considered degrading. He
simply ignored the Spanish boys of the school.
One Saturday morning, when Timoteo stood on the edge of the cliffs
outside the town, he saw Herbert picking his way out over the long
stretches of rocks to seaward; a basket on his arm and a stick in
his hand.
"He go to get abalones, and think he can knock them off with a
stick!" laughed Timoteo.
Herbert had not long lived in this vicinity, and he did not know the
tenacity with which the large, oval-shaped shell, called abalone, or
ear-shell, which is so well known and valued for its beautifully
colored, irridescent lining, clings to the rock when the shell's
inmate is living. At school, the day before, Timoteo had heard
Herbert say that he intended going after abalones on Saturday.
"He no get any," prophesied Timoteo, gazing after Herbert's
disappearing figure.
Timoteo himself was out abalone-hunting. This was one of the ways by
which he occasionally earned a few cents, visitors to the town
buying the large shells for curiosities. But Timoteo had with him a
long iron spike with which he intended to urge the abalone-shells
from the rocks.
The abalone has a large, very strong, white "foot" inside its long
shell, and there is a row of holes in the shell itself. It is
conjectured that the abalone perhaps exhausts the air under the
shell, and so causes the shell to cling more tightly to the rock
than ever, through atmospheric pressure. It is very difficult to
take an abalone from its rocky home, unless the creature is
surprised.
Timoteo, however, was acquainted with abalones, and made good use of
his weapon. He clambered far out over the wet rocks for hours,
finding abalones now and then, and waging war on these thick, rough
ovals that clung so tightly to the rock, the beautiful colors of the
abalone-shells entirely concealed. Timoteo saw nothing more of
Herbert, during these hours of work.
Timoteo succeeded in getting three abalones, the last an especially
large shell. He sat down on the rocks to rest, after the long
struggle with this big abalone. The tide was rising. He would go
home soon now.
While he sat there, it seemed to him that he heard the sound of
outcries. At first he thought it was the gulls. Half in fun he
shouted in reply. The distant cries seemed redoubled. Timoteo caught
up his basket and long spike. He sprang to his feet.
"Where is it?" he thought, confused with the splash of waves and the
toss of spray.
He listened. He sped, shouting, over the rocks in the direction from
which the cries seemed to come. He stopped now and then to listen.
Yes, it was a human voice that cried for help. It was not the gulls.
"Adonde?" (Where?) "Adonde?" shouted Timoteo, forgetting his English
in his excitement.
The answering shouts grew more distinct. Timoteo climbed over the
wet rocks till he found himself near a place where the sounds seemed
to come from between two rocks. Timoteo saw a boy reach up part way
between the two rocks. The boy could not crawl out. The hole between
the rocks was not big enough.
"Timoteo!" screamed a voice, and Timoteo recognized Herbert.
"Say!" Herbert called, "run for help, won't you? I was out here
abalone-hunting, and I guess one of these big rocks must have been
poised just right to topple over. Anyhow, in climbing down here I
managed to topple it. It didn't fall on me, but it fell against the
other rocks so that there isn't room for me to crawl out of here! I
can't make the rock budge, now. And the tide's coming! I thought I'd
drown, away out here, alone. You can't do anything with that spike.
It needs three or four men with levers. Run! The tide's up to my
waist, now! There isn't room between these rocks to crawl out."
For one moment Timoteo stood still and looked at Herbert. Then the
Spanish boy turned and flew over the rocks. Leaping from one
slippery foothold to another, he rushed toward the cliffs, up the
cliff road, on to the clusters of Chinese huts that made a little
fishing-village by itself on the edge of the bay. Whatever Spanish
or English vocabulary Timoteo used, he aroused two or three Chinamen
to forsake their frames of drying fish and cease tossing over the
other small fish that lay drying on the ground.
Seizing the long, heavy iron rods with which the Chinese were wont
to go abalone-hunting, the three Celestials followed in Timoteo's
wake toward the place where Herbert anxiously awaited rescue. There
was much prying with the iron rods before the stone was finally
tilted enough so that the drenched prisoner was released.
"My father pay you," gratefully promised Herbert to the Chinamen,
who nodded and plodded cheerfully back toward their tiny fishing-village.
Herbert looked at Timoteo.
"I'm much obliged to you," said Herbert. "You were good to run for
help."
But now that Timoteo had seen the success of his helpers, an abashed
silence seemed to have overtaken him. He did not answer. The silence
lasted till the two boys reached the cliffs. Herbert grew uneasy.
His conscience accused him somewhat.
"Come to my house, Timoteo, and my father will give you something
for helping me," promised Herbert uneasily, as the boys climbed the
cliffs.
Timoteo shook his head, but he did not look up.
"See here, Timoteo," burst out Herbert, stopping on top of the
cliffs, "what's the matter? Do you hate me?"
Timoteo glanced up slowly. His dark eyes were full of appeal.
"You no talk to teacher any more about me?" he besought. "You no
tell her my father lazy, we no-'count folks?"
Timoteo's voice shook. He hurried on: "I like teacher. I try be
clean. I wash my hands, my face, all time. I do ver' good to the
teacher. But my mother differ from your mother. Your mother give you
nice clean shirt and clothes. My mother too poor. I try learn, read,
spell. I grow like American boy."
It was the appeal of a soul that looked from Timoteo's eyes. Herbert
flushed.
"Why, you poor fellow, of course you try!" he answered heartily. "I--I'm
sorry if I've ever said anything to the teacher that made you
feel badly, Timoteo. I won't do it again, and the other boys
sha'n't, either! The teacher knows how hard you try. She said the
other day that you were a good boy. Come on up to our house. Won't
you?"
But Timoteo smiled, and shook his head, and went away on the long
road that led toward home. The heart of the Spanish boy was very
happy. He had done good to his enemy, and that enemy was turned into
a friend. And the teacher had said that Timoteo was a good boy! She
knew how hard he tried!
Timoteo sang for joy as he ran.
"I will learn! I will learn! I shall be like los Americanos!" he
sang, and then he remembered how he had been tempted for one instant
not to help Herbert. Timoteo shivered at the remembered temptation.
He sang again for very joy at having been helped to forgive his
enemy.
In the pines Timoteo stopped, and looked upward through the swaying
treetops.
"A Dios sea gloria por Jesu-Christo," he murmured reverently. ("To
God be glory through Jesus Christ.")
THE VICTORY OF QUANG PO
Jo bent down and slipped under the barbed wire fence that separated
the field back of the Chinese fishing-village from the other fields
that stretched away to the houses of the California seaside resort
under the pines. The wind blew pleasantly in from the sparkling bay.
A large number of frames for drying fish stretched away to the back
part of the Chinese field. A great net fifty feet long was spread
out on the ground to dry. Jo looked at the wooden sinkers that were
fastened along one side of the net and smiled. "They're all on
again," he thought.
A line of flounders stretched above the narrow, crooked street of
the fishing-village. The flounders looked like queer clothes hung to
dry on a clothes-line. There were crates of small fish, packed so
that they stood on their heads. Underneath a table of drying fish
lay a dead gopher.
Red placards spotted the houses. On the roof of one hut a little
paper windmill was turning in the breeze. Back of one hut was a bit
of garden inclosed with a fence of branches and containing much
mustard. Chinese were washing fish. Shells were exposed for sale,
since at any hour visitors from the American settlement might come
to traverse the Chinese village, and visitors often bought shells.
Even now, as Jo passed through the street, an old Chinaman beckoned
to the lad, and with much mystery unrolled a piece of brown paper
and showed a pearl that had come into his possession and that he
wished to sell.
Young Chinese girls, with red or yellow-capped babies strapped on
their backs, packed or spread the fish. Some little Chinese boys
were arranging dried squids in boats drawn up on the shore. On one
boat was a kind of wooden crane, holding a hanging pan. There were
some burnt sticks in the pan, and the whole contrivance was
evidently an arrangement whereby a fire could be made in the boat
when it was out at sea.
Jo stepped into one deserted hut, and found it to be a kitchen. An
oil can was over some ashes, and there were some queer, big kettles
near. In another place were Chinese children eating their breakfast.
One child had a Chinese cup, out of which she ate with chop-sticks.
Jo sat down on the edge of the village, and watched three women who
were setting off in a boat, intending to row out into the surf to
get kelp. Small fish lay drying all over the rocks by the sea-beach
near Jo, and a Chinaman was lifting up the fish, and letting them
drop again by the handful, while the wind blew away the straw or
grass that had become mixed with the fish while drying. Then the
fish were spread upon matting to dry further.
"Ho'lah!" the Chinaman said to Jo.
"Ho'lah!" responded Jo, and the conversation ceased.
For a few minutes Jo watched two or three Chinese boys who were
lying on the beach, sifting the white sand through their fingers,
hunting for the small, white "rice shells," that American people
often buy.
Presently, Jo pulled a sketch-book out of his pocket, and began to
draw the collection of queer huts that composed the Chinese village.
By and by the Chinaman who had been tossing fish, Quang Po, sat down
on the rocks. He looked at Jo for a time, and then came and glanced
over Jo's shoulder, smiling. The Chinamen of the village were used
to having artists come and plant their easels here and there on the
rocks or at the entrance of the narrow street, and draw the village
on their canvas. At such times, a small group of Chinamen usually
gathered about each artist, and made in their own tongue comments on
the drawing. No artist knew the nature of the criticisms made in his
very ears.
Jo smiled over his own drawing, as Quang Po inspected it.
"Wha' fo' you do that?" inquired Quang Po, mustering his English.
"This drawing?" questioned Jo. "Oh, you see, my cousin is an artist
on one of the city papers. He's older than I am, and he earns a good
deal of money. I'm going to learn to make pictures for papers, too.
Some day I'll have as good a position as my cousin has."
Quang Po looked puzzled. He did not understand. He always thought
American pictures strange. They were not made as Chinese pictures
were.
But Quang Po knew that once he had thought other American things
strange, too. Some Americans believed in teaching Chinese girls
wonderful stories and words from a wonderful Book. When Quang Po's
niece had been taught first by such an American, great was Quang's
wrath. To increase his indignation, another thing happened. He had
burnt incense at the stone in the middle of the fishing-village, in
order to find out what day would be most lucky to go fishing, and
had found that according to the stone the twenty-second day of the
month would be the most lucky day. He had therefore gone fishing on
the twenty-second, and he had come back sulky, having caught almost
nothing. Then Quang Po's niece had actually laughed at the ill-fortune
of her uncle, and had openly expressed her unbelief in the
village stone! Quang Po had been very angry for many days, but there
came a time when Quang Po's niece induced him to go with her to the
little mission school on the hill-side, and there Quang Po heard
that for which his soul thirsted. He saw the picture of the
Crucified. He understood the story, and he, like his niece, lost
faith in the village stone and in the incense-shelves. Quang Po
yielded his will and his life to Christ, and the Christian religion
seemed strange to him no longer.
So, when this Chinaman handed back the drawing to Jo, Quang Po
smiled and said the kindest thing he could think of, although the
drawing did not accord with his Chinese ideas of art.
"You draw like Melican," said Quang Po, winding his queue about his
head, and preparing to return to work.
Jo felt somewhat ashamed. He wished that he and the other boys had
not cut the sinkers off Quang Po's big net. Perhaps Quang Po did not
know that Jo had taken part in that mischief, but the thought of it
made Jo uncomfortable. So did the remembrance that he and the other
boys had slyly at night cut the line that held the flounders high in
air above the village street. The flounders now were safely
stretched aloft again, but the last time Jo remembered seeing them
they were lying in the dust. Jo was not an ill-natured lad, but he
had not objected to helping do the mischief. And now Quang Po had
spoken kindly of Jo's drawing! Jo winced a little. He was rather
proud of his ability as an artist, himself. He turned his attention,
to the flaming yellow pair of trousers worn by a small Chinese boy
among the numerous Chinese children in the street below. The
brilliant color made the little fellow most conspicuous as he
toddled here and there. In watching him, Jo tried to forget his own
self-reproach.
So far did he succeed in forgetting it that, that evening, when
Louis Rouse, one of the other boys whose parents were staying at the
resort during the summer vacation, proposed going over to the
Chinese village, Jo did not object, though he knew that the purpose
of going was to have some "fun," as Louis called it.
"Was the line of flounders up?" asked Louis gleefully, as the boys
went over the fields in the dusk. "Let's cut it again! And, say,
let's just tip over one of those frames for drying fish in the field
back of the village. We can do it carefully, so they won't hear."
Chuckling softly and speaking in whispers only, the boys crept about
the fishing-village and did the mischief planned. They pretended
that the Chinese village was a fort of enemies, and the boys were a
band of soldiers reconnoitering in the dark. They became quite
excited over the idea. Doing mischief seemed so much more glorious
than it would if they had allowed themselves to think that they were
really American boys doing a contemptible thing to quiet, peaceable
people.
Just as the boys had quietly tipped over one of the fish-frames,
letting the partially dried fish slide to the ground, there were
shouts in the dark of the Chinese village.
"The enemy's coming, boys!" whispered Louis, and the lads rushed for
the fence.
Some boys caught their feet in the big, spread-out net, and fell,
and rolled over, shaking with laughter. Others stuck between the
barbed wires of the fence, but all were outside, running across the
fields, before the Chinese had sallied out toward their frames. Some
distance from the fishing village, the boys dropped breathless
behind the large rocks near the sea, and laughed softly together. Jo
laughed with the others, though he said, "I sha'n't dare go near the
village for a week, till my hand gets well. The barbed wire gave me
some pretty deep scratches on the back of one hand, and the Chinamen
might guess how I got the marks."
"I've got one on my forehead, I guess," answered Louis, laughing.
"It feels so, anyway, and I guess it's bleeding."
The boys went home. Jo was silent on the way.
"I'm tired, laughing so much," he explained to the rest.
He could not help remembering how kind Quang Po's voice had sounded
when he said, "You draw like Melican."
During the next week Jo stayed away from the fishing village. The
scratches on his hand and on his cheek were all too plainly visible.
He occupied his vacation-time in rambling in other places besides
the Chinese village.
One morning, in his rambles, he went to what had once been an old
adobe dwelling. It was on a hill, quite a distance outside the town,
and was not often visited by any one. The old adobe had long ago
lost its tile roof, some of the walls had fallen, its former Spanish
inhabitants had long since disappeared, and quick-motioned, small
lizards now and then ran over the thick, ruined walls that stood,
dark and crumbling, against the light-brown of the wild oats on the
hill.
Jo climbed on top of one of the higher adobe walls. It still
retained its Spanish thickness, being about five feet through,
although crumbling at the sides and somewhat uncertain as to
uprightness.
"Must have taken a lot of clay to make it," thought Jo.
Just then a little lizard, that had been sunning itself in a niche
in the adobe wall, started, disturbed by Jo's proximity, and ran
swiftly over to another part of the wall. Jo was anxious to see
where the creature went. The boy jumped over a broken place in the
wall, and walked on its top, regardless of the fact that the adobe
was trembling.
"Guess it's gone where I can't see it," said Jo to himself. "This is
a nice sunny place for a lizard. I--"
Jo had stepped a little too far. There was a sudden trembling of the
wall. Jo caught at the adobe, which came away in handfuls, and he
fell with a large portion of the old wall.
The next thing he knew, he was lying, choked with dust, on what was
once the floor of the old Spanish dwelling. He was overtopped by a
heavy pile of debris, from under which he struggled in vain to
extricate himself. He had one free hand, with which, when he found
that other exertions did not avail, he tried to dig himself out; but
the more he dug, the more the great pile of adobe above him slid
down on his face, till he was in such imminent danger of being
smothered that he was forced to desist.
It was almost all he could do to breathe with such a weight upon
him, but after a few moments' rest he tried to shout for help. His
shouts were not very loud, and soon he had to stop. He lay breathing
heavily and looking up at the pile of dull earth.
"I wish," he panted, "I hadn't--come here."
He fervently hoped that some sight-seer like himself might be
attracted to the old, out-of-the-way adobe, for Jo was now convinced
that it was impossible for him to set himself free. He tried again
and again, but always with the same result of semi-suffocation under
the sliding debris.
The forenoon passed away. The sun, mounting higher, shone over the
dilapidated walls, and fell full on Jo's face. He shielded his eyes
with his free hand. The sun beat heavily on his head. Sometimes he
thought he heard a rustle in the wild oats, and he cried out for
help, but he afterward concluded the sound had been made by the wind
or by some lizard.
Gradually the shade began to lengthen in the adobe. Jo looked
wistfully at the shadow of the wall as it stretched a little farther
toward him, and he sighed with relief when at length the sun that
had made his head so hot was guarded from his face by the shadow
that reached him. He had lain here a number of hours, and now, as he
began to think about evening, he wondered what his father and mother
would do when he did not come home. If they had not worried about
him during the day, they would be alarmed at night.
"There are some coyotes around the neighborhood," thought Jo.
He knew that a number of poultry-yards had suffered from coyotes. Jo
did not suppose that a coyote would usually attack a person.
Chickens, lambs, young pigs, were a coyote's prey, but in Jo's
present situation he did not care to be visited by a coyote.
"I could throw clods at him," thought Jo. "I hope that would scare
him away."
As the sun sank, Jo shouted repeatedly, till his breath was gone. He
hoped that some laborer might take his homeward way across the
unfrequented hill. But the prospect of such relief seemed very
slight, so unused was this place to visitors. Jo saw a wild bird fly
far overhead in the glow of the evening sky. The bird could go home,
but he could not. He could only wait--how long?
After a while, there was the sound of clumsy feet that jolted by the
adobe. Jo heard.
"Come here!" he cried with all his strength. "Come here! Come here!"
The clumsy feet stopped. There was a creaking sound, as of baskets
swung to the ground. A face peered through a break in the wall, and
Quang Po climbed into the adobe.
"Ho'lah!" he said.
"Ho'lah!" faintly responded Jo.
Quang Po wasted no more words, but set to work. He had not much to
dig with, save his tough, yellow hands and a stick, but after nearly
an hour's exertion, he released Jo.
"You' bones bloke?" asked Quang anxiously.
"No," responded Jo, wincing. "My arm hurts, but I guess it's only a
sprain."
"Me cally fish to lady," explained Quang. "Me go closs hill to
lady's house. Hear you holler."
Jo tried to stand, but found himself dizzy and faint, and Quang Po,
leaving his baskets, went home with the lad.
Next day, Quang Po, going his rounds, was carrying his fish-baskets
past Jo's house. Jo, sitting on the steps, his arm in a bandage,
made a sign to Quang to stop.
"My mother wants to buy some fish of you," Jo said.
The fish were bought, and Quang was thanked by Jo's mother for
helping her boy. Quang went back to his baskets again, but Jo
followed.
"Quang Po," he said, choking a little, "you very good to me."
Quang Po smiled.
"Quang," confessed Jo, "I helped the other boys cut the sinkers from
your big net, once."
Quang nodded.
"Me sabe," (understand) he answered, "me sabe long time ago."
"I helped the other boys cut the line that held up your flounders,"
faltered Jo. "I helped tip over the fish-frame."
Quang Po nodded.
"Me t'ink so," he said.
"What for you good to me?" demanded Jo.
"Me Clistian," responded Quang Po with gravity, as if that one word
explained everything. "Clistian must do lite."
Jo looked at him. Quang lifted his heavy baskets on his pole.
"Goo' by," he said.
"Say--Quang Po," burst out Jo, "I'm sorry! I won't bother you any
more! I won't let the other boys do it, either! I can stop it."
Quang Po smiled.
"Me glad you solly," he said. "We be good flends, now." And he
trotted away, the heavy baskets creaking.
Jo looked after him.
"And I thought you were the heathen!" he whispered.
THE NEW IGLOO.
The sky was lowering. The small storm-"igloo," or round-topped snow
house, was full of Eskimo dogs that had crowded in to shelter
themselves from the bitter wind. This small igloo was built in front
of the door of a bigger round igloo in which an Eskimo family lived.
The dogs' small igloo was built where it was, to keep the wind and
the cold from coming in at the family's igloo door.
Over the snowy ground a boy, clad in a reindeer coat, came running.
His brown cheeks were flushed, and his black eyes were bright with
excitement. His lips curved and parted over his white teeth as he
chuckled happily to himself about something. He rushed to the very
low door of his home, dropped down on his hands and knees, put some
slender thing between his teeth, pulled the hood of the reindeer
coat up over his head so as to keep the snow from slipping down the
back of his neck, and then scrambled quickly through the low
opening, pushing aside the dogs, till he reached the interior of the
larger igloo. Then the boy jumped up and snatched the thing he had
held in his mouth.
"Oh, see, see!" he cried, holding up his treasure. "See what the
teacher gave me!"
What he held was the half of a lead pencil, a rarity to him, given
to him now as a prize at school.
"And see!" cried the excited lad once more.
He pulled from his reindeer coat a piece of paper. The paper was
part of his prize, too. He made some rude marks on the paper with
his pencil, and held them where they were visible by the light of
the small stone lamp, shaped like a huge clam shell, and burning
with walrus oil. The lad's face was illumined with enthusiasm. Never
before had he owned such treasures. To think they were his own! He
had earned them by good behavior, and diligent, though extremely
slow, attempts at learning. A sarcastic laugh came from one side of
the platform of snow, that was built around the whole circular
interior of the igloo. On the platform lounged the lad's brother,
Tanana. "You went without your breakfast yesterday, and ran to
school, and now you come back with those things!" laughed Tanana.
"You are a dog of the teacher's team, Anvik! He can drive you."
Anvik's black eyes snapped.
"He does not drive me!" cried the boy. "He teaches me to want to
learn! I have gone to school many days. I want to learn, to learn! I
can make A and B. See!"
He pushed his paper with its awkwardly formed letters farther into
the lamp's light. The edge of the precious paper took fire, and with
a cry of alarm, Anvik smothered his paper in the snow.
His brother laughed again.
"To-morrow will be another day," he said. "Why should anybody learn
for to-morrow?"
But the mother of the two lads stretched out her hand, and took the
paper, and looked at the straggling marks. The fat baby, that she
carried in the hood of her reindeer suit, crowed over her shoulder
at the piece of paper, and Anvik forgot to be angry. He put his
pencil in his mother's hand. She looked curiously at the strange new
thing.
"You make A, too, mother," urged the boy; and, putting his hand on
his mother's, he tried to show her how to make the strange marks.
His mother did little more than touch the paper with the pencil. She
smiled at the tiny dark line she had made, and gave back the pencil
and paper to the boy. She was proud of him, proud that the strange
white man should have thought her boy good enough to give him such
queer things. Anvik saw her pride, and felt comforted.
"To-morrow will be another day," murmured Tanana from his lounging
place. "The teacher is wrong. He makes that loud sound when school
begins. The wise man says the teacher must not make that sound any
more, for it will prevent our people from catching foxes and seals."
"It is the school-bell," answered Anvik, knowing that the Eskimo
sorcerer had gone to the teacher but a few days previous, to
prophesy evil concerning the ringing of the bell. "The foxes and the
seals care not for it. Go to school with me, Tanana, to-morrow. The
teacher wants you."
Tanana did not answer. He drew a bottle from out of his skin suit
and drank. Anvik looked at his mother. The odor of the liquor spread
through the small round house. Anvik had not noticed the odor when
he came in, being then too excited over his prize to have room in
his head for any other idea. But now he felt a great sadness of
soul. Tanana and their father were both beginning to learn to drink.
The sailors who came to the shore had liquor with them sometimes,
and traded it to the natives.
The teacher at school had told the boys never to touch the sailors'
liquor. The teacher said it would steal the boys' souls. Anvik did
not understand that very well, but he knew liquor made Tanana and
their father cross and lazy, and the laziness kept them poor, and
the mother was sad.
Anvik lay long awake that night, on the raised platform of snow in
the igloo, and thought.
"My teacher said he heard that at one Eskimo village a canoe came
with whisky and the Eskimos pounded on a drum all night, and
shouted," thought the lad. "When the morning came, the people were
ashamed to look in the face of their teacher. My teacher said I must
pray the dear Lord Christ to save Tanana and my father from
drinking."
And Anvik prayed in the dark igloo.
The next day came, and Anvik went again to school, but Tanana and
the father went off to look at the ice-traps wherein Eskimos catch
any stray wolves or foxes.
When Anvik came back at night to the igloo, he met his father and
Tanana rejoicing over a bear cub that they had killed. They were
bringing it home with them, and were laughing, and shouting, and
singing, not so much from joy as from drinking together from the
bottle that Tanana had procured.
"We have a bear cub, a bear cub!" shouted Tanana in maudlin tones to
his brother. "See how strong the hot water we drink makes us! We
come home with a bear cub! Hot water, let us drink hot water!"
Now by "hot water" Tanana meant of course the liquor in his bottle,
and when Anvik saw the young bear and the condition his father and
brother were in, the lad immediately became very anxious, for the
Eskimos are usually very careful not to kill a young bear without
having first killed its mother. It is considered a very rash thing
to kill the cub first, and when men who are pressed by hunger do it,
they are obliged to exercise the strictest precaution lest they
should be attacked by the mother-bear, for she will surely follow on
the track of the men.
So the Eskimos usually go in a straight line for about five or six
miles, and then suddenly turn off at a right angle, so that the
mother-bear, as she presses eagerly forward, may overrun the
hunters' track and lose her way. The men go on a distance, and then
turn as before.
After doing this several times, the men dare to go home, but even
there weapons are placed ready for use by the bedside, and outside
the house sledges are put up right, for the bear is always
suspicious of the erect sledge, and she will knock it dawn before
she will attack the igloo. The knocking down of the sledge makes a
noise that gives warning to the family.
But when Anvik saw the condition that his father and brother were
in, he was greatly frightened, for he did not believe that the
liquor had left enough sense in their minds so that they had
remembered to turn off in the homeward journey, and, if they had
come home without covering their track, there could be no doubt that
the mother bear would come to attack the igloo that very night.
But it would do no good to say anything to Tanana and his father.
They were far too much under the influence of what they had been
drinking. Anvik told his mother his suspicions.
"We will set up the sledge outside the igloo," said his mother,
trembling.
"I will have my harpoon ready," answered Anvik bravely. "Do not
fear, mother. Perhaps the bear will not come."
They put two harpoons and a spear beside the raised platform of snow
in the igloo, after the father and older son were stupidly sleeping.
Then came an anxious time of waiting. The stone lamp's light grew
more and more dim to Anvik's drowsy eyes, as he, too, lay on one
side of the circular platform. Nothing disturbed his father and
brother in their heavy, liquor-made sleep. Anvik's eyes closed at
last, even while he was determined to keep awake. His mother, tired
with scraping and pounding skins, nestled her chubby baby in her
neck, and dropped asleep; too, after long watching. The igloo was
quiet, except for the heavy breathing.
A terrible noise arose outdoors. Anvik started into consciousness.
There was an uproar of dogs, awakened by the destroying of their
small igloo. The sledge fell. The family igloo seemed to shake
throughout the entire circle of hard snow blocks. The dome-shaped
hut quaked under the attack of some foe.
"Father! Father, wake up!" screamed Anvik, springing to his feet.
"The bear! The bear has come! Father! Tanana!"
He rushed to their side and shook them, but he could not rouse them.
"Wake up! Wake up!" screamed Anvik.
His mother caught one harpoon. Anvik seized another. The great paws
were digging into the igloo! The dogs had attacked the bear, but she
fought them off, killing some with the powerful blows of her claws.
"Be ready, Anvik!" warned his mother.
The side of the igloo gave way! A dreadful struggle followed. There
was a chorus of barks and growls and screams. The bear fought
desperately. The struggle and the falling snow partially wakened the
father and son, but they were stupidly useless. The dogs attacked
the bear's back. Anvik, watching his chance while the bear was
repelling the dogs, drove a harpoon into the animal. The bear
savagely thrust at the lad, but the dogs leaped up and Anvik's
mother drove her harpoon into the enemy. As well as he could in the
darkness, Anvik chose his opportunity, and as he had seen older
Eskimos do, skillfully avoided the attacks the bear strove to make
upon him, till at last he managed to drive the sharp spear to the
animal's heart.
All was over at last. The shrieks, the growls ceased, and the dead
bear lay among the ruins of the igloo.
The next day Anvik stayed away from school to help build a new
igloo. His father and Tanana did not talk much, from the time when
they laid the blocks of extremely hard snow in a circle till the
time when the inwardly-slanting snow walls had risen to the topmost
horizontal block that joined the walls. But, once during the
building, when the three workers had taken great flat shovels, made
of strips of bone lashed together, and were throwing loose snow
against the sides of the new igloo to protect its future inhabitants
from the cold, the father stopped, and turning to Tanana said:
"My heart is ashamed! The hot water made us forget to hide the way
to the igloo, and when the bear came to kill my wife and children,
the hot water made us sleep. My heart is ashamed."
And Tanana, keenly humiliated that his younger brother and not
himself had killed the bear, answered, "My heart is ashamed, also."
"The hot water bottle shall not come to my mouth again," resolved
the father, with determination.
And Tanana promised the same. The bottle had been broken in the
scuffle, but Tanana knew his father's and his own promise included
any other bottle of liquor.
"You shall go to the teacher's school with Anvik," decided the
father. "The teacher speaks well when he tells the boys that the hot
water will steal their souls. If Anvik had drank it, we should all
have been killed."
Anvik jumped up from chinking a crack between two snow blocks. He
remembered his prayer, and he laughed aloud now with joy for the
answer.
"The new igloo is better than the old!" he cried. "The hot water
will never go in at the door of our new igloo!"
And in his heart the boy added, "May the dear Lord Christ come into
our new home!"